Tupac Shakur grew up around nothing but self-delusion. His mother,
Alice Faye Williams, thought she was a "revolutionary." She called
herself "Afeni Shakur" and associated with members of the ill-fated
Black Panther Party, a movement that wanted to feed school kids
breakfast and earn civil rights for African Americans.
During her youth she dropped out of high school, partied with North
Carolina gang members, then moved to Brooklyn: After an affair with one
of Malcolm X's bodyguards, she became political. When the mostly white
United Federation of Teachers went on strike in 1968, she crossed the
picket line and taught the children herself. After this she joined a New
York chapter of the Black Panther Party and fell in with an organizer
named Lumumba. She took to ranting about killing "the pigs" and
overthrowing the government, which eventually led to her arrest and that
of twenty comrades for conspiring to set off a race war. Pregnant, she
made bail and told her husband, Lummuba, it wasn't his child. Behind his
back she had been carrying on with Legs (a small-time associate of
Harlem drug baron Nicky Barnes) and Billy Garland (a member of the
Party). Lumumba immediately divorced fer.
Things went downhill for Afeni: Bail revoked, she was imprisoned in
the Women's House of Detention in Greenwich Village. In her cell she
patted her belly and said, "This is my prince. He is going to save the
black nation."
By the time Tupac was born on June 16, 1971, Afeni had already
defended herself in court and been acquitted on 156 counts. Living in
the Bronx, she found steady work as a paralegal and tried to raise her
son to respect the value of an education.
From childhood, everyone called him the "Black Prince." For
misbehaving, he had to read an entire edition of The New York Times. But
she had no answer when he asked about his daddy. "She just told me, 'I
don't know who your daddy is.' It wasn't like she was a slut or nothin'.
It was just some rough times."When he was two, his sister, Sekyiwa, was
born. This child's father, Mutulu, was a Black Panther who, a few
months before her birth, had been sentenced to sixty years for a fatal
armored car robbery.
With Mutulu away, the family experienced hard times. No matter where
they moved-the Bronx, Harlem, homeless shelters-Tupac was distressed. "I
remember crying all the time. My major thing growing up was I couldn't
fit in. Because I was from everywhere. I didn't have no buddies that I
grew up with."
As time passed, the issue of his father tormented him. He felt
"unmanly," he said. Then his cousins started saying he had an effeminate
face. "I don't know. I just didn't feel hard. I could do all the things
my mother could give me, but she couldn't give me nothing else."
The loneliness began to wear on him. He retreated into writing love
songs and poetry. "I remember I had a book like a diary. And in that
book I said I was going to be famous." He wanted to be an actor. Acting
was an escape from his dismal life. He was good at it, eager to leave
his crummy family behind. "The reason why I could get into acting was
because it takes nothin' to get out of who I am and go into somebody
else."
His mother enrolled him in the 127th Street Ensemble, a theater group
in the impoverished Harlem section of Manhattan, where he landed his
first role at age twelve, that of Travis in A Raisin in the Sun. "I lay
on a couch and played sleep for the first scene. Then I woke up and I
was the only person onstage. I can remeber thinking, "This is the best
shit in the world!" That got me real high. I was gettin' a secret: This
is what my cousins can't do."
In Baltimore, at age fifteen, he fell into rap; he started writing
lyrics, walking with a swagger, and milking his background in New York
for all it was worth. People in small towns feared the Big Apple's
reputation; he called himself MC New York and made people think he was a
tough guy.
He enrolled in the illustrious Balitomore School for the Arts, where
he studied acting and ballet with white kids and finally felt "in touch"
with himself. "Them white kids had things we never seen," he said.
"That was the first time I saw there was white people who you could get
along with. Before that, I just believed what everyone else said: They
was devils. But I loved it. I loved going to school. It taught me a lot.
I was starting to feel like I really wanted to be an artist.
By the time he was twenty, Shakur had been arrested eight times, even
serving eight months in prison after being convicted of sexual abuse.
In addition, he was the subject of two wrongful-death lawsuits, one
involving a six-year-old boy who was killed after getting caught in
gang-war crossfire between Shakur's gang and a rival group.
In the late eighties, Shakur teamed up with Humpty-Hump (a.k.a. Eddie
Humphrey, a.k.a. Gregory "Shock-G" Jacobs) and other Oakland-based
rappers to create Digital Underground, a band intent on massive bass
beats and frenetic, Parliament-Funkadelic-style rhythms. In 1990, the
group released its debut and best album, Sex Packets, a pulsating
testament to the boogie power of hip-hop, featuring two classic tracks,
"Humpty Dance" and "Doowutchyalike." After an EP of re-mixes in 1991,
D.U. released Sons of the P and, the following year, The Body-Hat
Syndrome, all on Tommy Boy Records.
In 1992, Shakur entered a most fruitful five-year period. He broke
free of D.U. and made his solo debut, 2Pacalypse Now, a gangsta rap
document that put him in the notorious, high-speed lane to stardom. That
same year he starred in Juice, an acclaimed low-budget film about gangs
which saw some Hollywood success. In 1993, he recorded and released
Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z., an album that found Shakur crossing over to
the pop charts with singles such as Keep Ya Head Up and I Get Around.
Unfortunately, he also found himself on police blotters, when
allegations of a violent attack on an off-duty police officer and sexual
misconduct arose. The same year, Shakur played a single father and
Janet Jackson's love interest in the John Singleton film Poetic Justice.
In November of 1994, he was shot five times during a robbery in which
thieves made off with $40,000 worth of his jewelry. Shakur miraculously
recovered from his injuries and in 24 hours he checked himself out of
the hospital to produce his most impressive artistic accomplishments,
including 1995's Me Against the World, which sold over 5 million copies
to date, and the double-CD All Eyez on Me, which recently sold diamond.
As his career arc began a steep rise toward fame and fortune, Shakur was
shot (most say suspiciously) and killed after watching a Mike Tyson
fight with Death Row Records president Marion "Suge" Knight. Though his
death was a jolt to his fans and the music community, Shakur himself
often said that he expected he'd die by the sword before he reached
thirty.
Following his passing, Shakur's label released an album, The Don
Killuminati, under the pseudonym "Makaveli." The cover depicted Shakur
nailed to a cross under a crown of thorns, with a map of the country's
major gang areas superimposed on it. In January of 1997, Gramercy
pictures released Gridlock'd, a film in which Shakur played the role of a
drug addict to mostly good reviews. His final film, Gang Related, was
released in 1997. Tupac Shakur has to date sold over 80 million copies
worldwide, with posthumous albums such as R U Still Down (Remember Me),
Still I Rise, Until The End Of Time, Better Dayz, Loyal To The Game and
Pacs Life. Death Row Records recently got bought by WideAwake
Entertainment. Afeni Shakur stated that Death Row, Daz Dillinger and
Amaru Entertainment got about 200 unreleased tracks left in the vault.
Alice Faye Williams, thought she was a "revolutionary." She called
herself "Afeni Shakur" and associated with members of the ill-fated
Black Panther Party, a movement that wanted to feed school kids
breakfast and earn civil rights for African Americans.
During her youth she dropped out of high school, partied with North
Carolina gang members, then moved to Brooklyn: After an affair with one
of Malcolm X's bodyguards, she became political. When the mostly white
United Federation of Teachers went on strike in 1968, she crossed the
picket line and taught the children herself. After this she joined a New
York chapter of the Black Panther Party and fell in with an organizer
named Lumumba. She took to ranting about killing "the pigs" and
overthrowing the government, which eventually led to her arrest and that
of twenty comrades for conspiring to set off a race war. Pregnant, she
made bail and told her husband, Lummuba, it wasn't his child. Behind his
back she had been carrying on with Legs (a small-time associate of
Harlem drug baron Nicky Barnes) and Billy Garland (a member of the
Party). Lumumba immediately divorced fer.
Things went downhill for Afeni: Bail revoked, she was imprisoned in
the Women's House of Detention in Greenwich Village. In her cell she
patted her belly and said, "This is my prince. He is going to save the
black nation."
By the time Tupac was born on June 16, 1971, Afeni had already
defended herself in court and been acquitted on 156 counts. Living in
the Bronx, she found steady work as a paralegal and tried to raise her
son to respect the value of an education.
From childhood, everyone called him the "Black Prince." For
misbehaving, he had to read an entire edition of The New York Times. But
she had no answer when he asked about his daddy. "She just told me, 'I
don't know who your daddy is.' It wasn't like she was a slut or nothin'.
It was just some rough times."When he was two, his sister, Sekyiwa, was
born. This child's father, Mutulu, was a Black Panther who, a few
months before her birth, had been sentenced to sixty years for a fatal
armored car robbery.
With Mutulu away, the family experienced hard times. No matter where
they moved-the Bronx, Harlem, homeless shelters-Tupac was distressed. "I
remember crying all the time. My major thing growing up was I couldn't
fit in. Because I was from everywhere. I didn't have no buddies that I
grew up with."
As time passed, the issue of his father tormented him. He felt
"unmanly," he said. Then his cousins started saying he had an effeminate
face. "I don't know. I just didn't feel hard. I could do all the things
my mother could give me, but she couldn't give me nothing else."
The loneliness began to wear on him. He retreated into writing love
songs and poetry. "I remember I had a book like a diary. And in that
book I said I was going to be famous." He wanted to be an actor. Acting
was an escape from his dismal life. He was good at it, eager to leave
his crummy family behind. "The reason why I could get into acting was
because it takes nothin' to get out of who I am and go into somebody
else."
His mother enrolled him in the 127th Street Ensemble, a theater group
in the impoverished Harlem section of Manhattan, where he landed his
first role at age twelve, that of Travis in A Raisin in the Sun. "I lay
on a couch and played sleep for the first scene. Then I woke up and I
was the only person onstage. I can remeber thinking, "This is the best
shit in the world!" That got me real high. I was gettin' a secret: This
is what my cousins can't do."
In Baltimore, at age fifteen, he fell into rap; he started writing
lyrics, walking with a swagger, and milking his background in New York
for all it was worth. People in small towns feared the Big Apple's
reputation; he called himself MC New York and made people think he was a
tough guy.
He enrolled in the illustrious Balitomore School for the Arts, where
he studied acting and ballet with white kids and finally felt "in touch"
with himself. "Them white kids had things we never seen," he said.
"That was the first time I saw there was white people who you could get
along with. Before that, I just believed what everyone else said: They
was devils. But I loved it. I loved going to school. It taught me a lot.
I was starting to feel like I really wanted to be an artist.
By the time he was twenty, Shakur had been arrested eight times, even
serving eight months in prison after being convicted of sexual abuse.
In addition, he was the subject of two wrongful-death lawsuits, one
involving a six-year-old boy who was killed after getting caught in
gang-war crossfire between Shakur's gang and a rival group.
In the late eighties, Shakur teamed up with Humpty-Hump (a.k.a. Eddie
Humphrey, a.k.a. Gregory "Shock-G" Jacobs) and other Oakland-based
rappers to create Digital Underground, a band intent on massive bass
beats and frenetic, Parliament-Funkadelic-style rhythms. In 1990, the
group released its debut and best album, Sex Packets, a pulsating
testament to the boogie power of hip-hop, featuring two classic tracks,
"Humpty Dance" and "Doowutchyalike." After an EP of re-mixes in 1991,
D.U. released Sons of the P and, the following year, The Body-Hat
Syndrome, all on Tommy Boy Records.
In 1992, Shakur entered a most fruitful five-year period. He broke
free of D.U. and made his solo debut, 2Pacalypse Now, a gangsta rap
document that put him in the notorious, high-speed lane to stardom. That
same year he starred in Juice, an acclaimed low-budget film about gangs
which saw some Hollywood success. In 1993, he recorded and released
Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z., an album that found Shakur crossing over to
the pop charts with singles such as Keep Ya Head Up and I Get Around.
Unfortunately, he also found himself on police blotters, when
allegations of a violent attack on an off-duty police officer and sexual
misconduct arose. The same year, Shakur played a single father and
Janet Jackson's love interest in the John Singleton film Poetic Justice.
In November of 1994, he was shot five times during a robbery in which
thieves made off with $40,000 worth of his jewelry. Shakur miraculously
recovered from his injuries and in 24 hours he checked himself out of
the hospital to produce his most impressive artistic accomplishments,
including 1995's Me Against the World, which sold over 5 million copies
to date, and the double-CD All Eyez on Me, which recently sold diamond.
As his career arc began a steep rise toward fame and fortune, Shakur was
shot (most say suspiciously) and killed after watching a Mike Tyson
fight with Death Row Records president Marion "Suge" Knight. Though his
death was a jolt to his fans and the music community, Shakur himself
often said that he expected he'd die by the sword before he reached
thirty.
Following his passing, Shakur's label released an album, The Don
Killuminati, under the pseudonym "Makaveli." The cover depicted Shakur
nailed to a cross under a crown of thorns, with a map of the country's
major gang areas superimposed on it. In January of 1997, Gramercy
pictures released Gridlock'd, a film in which Shakur played the role of a
drug addict to mostly good reviews. His final film, Gang Related, was
released in 1997. Tupac Shakur has to date sold over 80 million copies
worldwide, with posthumous albums such as R U Still Down (Remember Me),
Still I Rise, Until The End Of Time, Better Dayz, Loyal To The Game and
Pacs Life. Death Row Records recently got bought by WideAwake
Entertainment. Afeni Shakur stated that Death Row, Daz Dillinger and
Amaru Entertainment got about 200 unreleased tracks left in the vault.
